Next Meeting:
Thursday, December 8th, 6pm to 8:30pm @ ABI Innovation Hub
33 South Commercial Street ° Manchester, NH 03101
Directions: http://himer.us/abihub
Website: http://www.abihub.org/
Signup!
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Primary Topic/Presentation
Boz wants to play 'Name that module!' based on wireframes for a current project. This is a great opportunity to learn about other people's favorite modules and also learn about project planning, architecture and strategy.
Additional Topics/Presentations
We'd like to see everyone come prepared (even just mentally) to either pose a question/issue they've ran across in the past month, or something cool/amazing they've discovered in the past month. There are plenty of questions out there, so let's make sure we know what they are so we can get them all answered at this month's meetup!!
Dinner & Drinks
After each meetup, we depart from the "structured" environment, and continue our discussions over beers and/or food. We usually go to Pochito's Mexican Restaurant.
Other possible locations include: Murphy's Tap Room, Strange Brew, or Milly's Tavern.
We look forward to seeing you all there!!
Comments
Virtual meeting too?
Last month we used Google Hangouts. The feedback was that it went really well. Any interest in trying that again this month?
Michelle Lauer
michellelauer.com
Google Hangouts
Can we record it? I can't make the meeting on Thursday - if we can't record it, I say we find another solution. Doesn't have to be Adobe Connect - but something that we can record and post a link to the session - then follow up online via groups.
We can try AdobeConnect this
We can try AdobeConnect this month. I will need detailed instructions since I didn't do that well at the Camp clicking the correct buttons. The other option would be for me to run a screen recorder while on a Google Hangout.
Michelle Lauer
michellelauer.com
AdobeConnect
With AdobeConnect, I believe you would need a commercial license to include more than 2 participants. You'll find out.
Bob
Virtual meeting
Hi Michelle,
I'd appreciate your hosting a virtual meeting for this week's Manchester meeting. Between living in Portsmouth and my family responsibilities, it's hard for me to make it to Manchester.
Cheers,
Bob
Topic/Presentation Offering
Last month was my first meetup. This meetup I wanted to offer something that's kinda Drupal related. I'm new to Drupal but I'm an old-hat at running web servers (all flavors). I been doing web hosting for near a decade (currently have 6 dedicated servers at a data center in Texas and a 24U rack of equipment at my house).
So I thought I would offer - only if there is a need/interest - a session on running a web server and the security considerations of running a server (15 year track record of only being hacked on the OS level once!). Or at the least let the group know I'm available for questions in between meetups.
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Vote Yes
I vote yes. I think this would be interesting.
www.EcoBoro.com
Topic/Presentation Offering
I vote yes as well. I'm sorry, I meant to answer right off since this is something my organization might like to pursue.
Great. Given the limited
Great. Given the limited time I'm not going to try and run through a complete installation. What I will discuss will be *nix centric. I think the most problems people have probably evolve around the Apache portion of the setup so I'll focus the most on that. I'll have come with props too. I'll have a fresh CentOS image on my laptop with me.
To make this interactive, if you have specific questions come with them and I can answer them.
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Snow!
For anyone traveling, FYI there's expected to be snow tonight so tomorrow's road conditions could be a bit iffy.
According to WMUR the snow
According to WMUR the snow should be over by 8:00 AM, that's assuming they are right, :) I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
http://www.wmur.com/slideshow/weather/29942829/detail.html
I also vote Yes on the server presentation. I'm slowly studing for Comptia Linux+
Mary M.
project demo?
Presuming I make it I could do a demo of the project I launched since the last meeting, if anyone's interested?
Sure!
Sure!
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Virtually Attending
I'm gonna try to attend via Google Hangout or whatever. I'll look for the invite Michelle
:(
Not going to make it in person (darned late-evening meetings), but will try the 'ol 'angout.
VIRTUAL MEETING TONIGHT!
VIRTUAL MEETING
http://edc.adobeconnect.com/drupalnh
Michelle Lauer
michellelauer.com
Just a follow up to last
Just a follow up to last nights meeting I did find that VMware does have a free version for download called Player it has no support other than the forums and a user document.
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/overview.html
Mary M.
I always forget about Player!
I always forget about Player!
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
VM and Virus Protection
Does anyone know if you need to get virus protection for a VM, or does the virus protection software on the host OS take care of that?
Thanks,
Boz
www.EcoBoro.com
I guess it depends on what
I guess it depends on what your going to do with it, if you plan on having it up and running all the time then a quick google search says yes. http://communities.vmware.com/thread/140056 The host OS does not see the VM. I plan on playing with VM too but may not put antivirus on it because it will either be rebuild on regular basis or I may just play it safe and use it on a machine that does not have internet access.
Mary M.
My understanding is that your
My understanding is that your physical host OS's virus protection will handle the installed VM environment. However, my understanding is that it does NOT handle any guest OS hosted by the VM itself; this means that each guest OS hosted by the VM needs its own virus protection.
In my case, Intego VirusBarrier scans, etc. the Parallels VM that runs on my Mac's OS X. I run a single guest OS, Win XP Pro, in Parallels. This Win XP system is running Kaspersky's AntiVirus.
Bob
12 years now.... I don't run
12 years now.... I don't run virus scanning software on anything. Never have, never will :)
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Thanks
Good info!
www.EcoBoro.com
Mac OS X conflict between VMs
Just to clarify the remark I made last night...
I am running OS X Snow Leopard on an Intel-based Mac (64 bit). Plenty of resources available. Ever since I acquired this Mac, I have also been running a Win XP Pro as a guest OS of a Parallels Desktop for Mac VM.
Recently I experimented with both the Quickstart 1.0 i386 and Quickstart 1.0 amd64 appliances (see http://drupal.org/project/quickstart), running as guests inside the latest stable version of the VirtualBox VM.
Without going into the gory details, once the Parallels VM has been started, and regardless of whether or not the Win XP guest has been launched, VirtualBox refuses to launch either Quickstart appliance. This is true even after quitting Parallels.
The only consistent workaround I discovered is to restart my Mac, and then to log in holding the Shift key down, which guarantees that no startup item launches. Then I am able to start VirtualBox and have it host Quickstart. Way too drastic a workaround.
So, I won't be using Quickstart.
Bob
Since you already have
Since you already have Parallels for Mac. I would just setup a VM with that. Just means you have to do it from scratch rather than using the quickstart part.
Other option.
Setup your the website on your mac using a package like MAMP or building the components with MacPorts (this is what I recommend).
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Thanks, Brady. Thus far my
Thanks, Brady. Thus far my needs are met by D6 and D7 installs of the Acquia Desktop stack on my Mac proper, augmented by other tools.
Bob
Bitnami for VM Images
Forgot to show this link last night:
http://bitnami.org/
They have a good amount of VM appliances that you can install. One happens to be Drupal. They stay on top of it too. It's already upgraded to 7.10
There are also other fun appliances to play around with too.
I got a 2U server sitting on my floor that I'm going to turn into a virtual server to do regression testing on websites with WinXP, Vista, Win7 and all the different IE's... I do this with my Mac right now but it's taxing and I can't run them all at once :)
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Drupal Commerce
Since it did not come up in last night's talk about this project, it might be helpful to know that the Commerce project is sponsored and nurtured by a company called Commerce Guys (http://www.commerceguys.com/). If you haven't already looked, you'll be interested to see who is on their team.
Bob
I recognize Ryan
Thanks Bob,
I recognized Ryan Szrama, the project lead and writer of the DGD7 Chapter on Drupal Commerce. (Ooh, shameless plug?) I didn't recognize anyone else. Anyone you had in mind to take note of?
I'm about to take a deep dive into Commerce and make that one of my areas of expertise, so thanks for the tip on the website. Any other tips for someone that wants to get serious about having Commerce in their skill set?
Thanks,
Boz
www.EcoBoro.com
Ryan Szrama is the person I
Ryan Szrama is the person I was alluding to.
It's a bang up amazing
It's a bang up amazing shopping cart. Learning it would be a really good thing cause it can be easily sold to people needing an eCommerce solution. It's flexibility is the best of any shopping cart I have seen! Like I said at the meeting, my website lives on eCommerce so I know the hardships and the tradeoffs you have to make with shopping carts. Commerce seems to almost near eliminate all those tradeoffs.
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
Exporting configuration data to code, etc.
Hi Michelle,
Last night you mentioned that one can export configuration data to code. This also implies that one can import the exported config data, e.g., to update a production site's configuration to match that of an associated staging or development site.
Please, tell me more!
Thanks,
Bob
Several Options
The easiest way to put your configurations in code is with the Features module. If you use Context for block placement, this is exportable. If you use Strongarm, anything in the variables table can be exported. Views, Panels, ImageStyles, Content Types, Rules, etc... can all be exported as well. The Boxes module allows you to put custom blocks in code. Features is a fabulous module, but there are some issues when you "revert" what you created from the database to use the code version. It is ideal if you use it from the start and you develop locally, but test in a dev environment where you never have the database changes, but only the code versions. Workflow should always be a 3-step process of local->dev->production.
Many core and contrib modules allow you to do write your own function to declare default values. Features provides a GUI for you.
Additionally, you can write custom database update scripts to set configurations. Each developer can run these locally instead of having to run through a series of admin-click-steps.
I can go into more detail or provide you with some good discussion/tutorial links if needed.
Michelle Lauer
michellelauer.com
Suggest we change these meeting times to 5-to-7:30 pm
I would like to get to know my Drupal compatriots better. As Michelle recently pointed out, a great vehicle for this is our getting together for drinks/dinner after the monthly meetings.
In my case, with them ending at 8:30, I am unable to stick around. That's because my drives from and to Portsmouth are each 1-hour long -- longer during the winter -- and because my wife, who is somewhat disabled, basically needs me to be back home around 9:30 or so.
If the monthly meetings were scheduled to run from 5pm to 7:30pm, the advantages to me would be:
Avoiding most of the intense rush-hour traffic on Routes 95 South and 101 West, when going from Portsmouth to Manchester.
Being able to get together with others following the meetings, for up to an hour.
Getting back home at what is a reasonable hour for my wife.
Face-to-face is far better than attending virtually, IMHO, which is why I drove to this month's meeting. I intend to continue doing so.
What are others thoughts about my suggestion that we change the time frames for these meetings?
Cheers,
Bob
Suggest we change these meeting times to 5-to-7:30 pm
I haven't seen a conclusion or poll regarding this topic so I thought I'd put in my 2cents. 5pm-7:30 would work out better for me as well but I don't find the current schedule particularly onerous either.
-Kevin
I'd also be in favor for the
I'd also be in favor for the 5-7:30 meeting time. I'm far more likely to make the drive out to Manchester leaving straight from work than driving back home to Dover and then going to Manchester. Although, I prefer the drive without snow, if possible. ;)
I think I could make 1700. I
I think I could make 1700. I work down in Burlington, MA so it's a haul from work.
Brady
@fastglassllc
@derailedonline
A 17:00 (5:00 PM) meeting
A 17:00 (5:00 PM) meeting maybe hard for some to make especially if they are working during the day. right now I have a hard time making the 6:00 PM meeting. :) But that is me trying to get out the door, I don't work on Thursdays. Maybe a poll will help??
Mary M.
Either way for me
Either time works for me.
We could do drinks at 5:00. Meeting at 6:00. More drinks at 8:30. Stagger to Miche and Jake's. Then a little hair of the dog at 8:00 AM.
Hiccup,
Boz;)
www.EcoBoro.com
I have Parallels for my VM
I have Parallels for my VM (the only one I'm running thus far is Windows XP). And I use MAMP for setting up development sites on my Mac. All that seems to work fine. The one thing I haven't been able to figure out is--while I have all my dev sites installed on my Mac with MAMP, I can't figure out a way to access those sites for testing when I'm in the VM on the same machine. Anyone have any clues for that? Or is it just not possible?
As for the discussion about meeting times for the Manchester Group... I could make the 5PM meeting if we moved it up, although I still prefer the 6PM time since I'm coming from about an hour away. I'll make the meetings--in person--whenever you have 'em. They are always a good time with good folks, and very informative.
Roger
_________________
Art has gone to the dogs
GoodeGallery.com
It depends
It depends on how you set up the VM to do the networking, but you could start with taking a look at the network settings in your VM, but it's probably going to be either:
If you bring your laptop to the next meeting we can help you get it working right.
Thanks Damien, I'll take a
Thanks Damien, I'll take a look at this and see if I can get it to work. I'm not at all familiar with PCs, so first I'll have to figure out where the hosts file is. But I'm sure I can find that with a google search.
If I come up blank, I'll bring the laptop along next time.
Roger
_________________
Art has gone to the dogs
GoodeGallery.com